In the center of the room, the transmatter hummed. A technician was weighing, measuring and radio-analyzing a series of graduated metal test blocks,- then placing them one by one on the transmitter plate, and recording results as the blocks vanished and reappeared on the receiver plate. The place was littered with papers and a large blackboard was filled with unintelligible scribbles.
“How’s it going?” McEvoy said.
“Not very good.” Merry shook his head wearily. “It’s almost completely unpredictable and inconsistent, and if anything, it’s getting worse instead of better. About half the time now, nothing comes through at all. It’s like a door into nowhere. The test blocks just disappear. Or when they do come through they may be molten, or powdered, or chemically altered. It just defies logic, the way this thing is working.”
“This woman thinks your gadget here caused that chunk of Manhattan to disappear,”
McEvoy said.
“Well, I’ve lost half a ton of steel test blocks into it—” Merry broke off, confused. He looked at McEvoy and back to Gail. “Are you serious?”
“Quite serious,” Gail said.
“But I haven’t had this thing anywhere near—say, what is this?”
Briefly, McEvoy told him about the conversation upstairs. Robert, listening with one ear, went to peer over the technician’s shoulder as he loaded another test block onto the transmitter plate. “So I hated to bother you,” McEvoy concluded, “but I thought if she got at look at this machine and a brief rundown on how it works, she might realize how ridiculous this whole idea is.”
“Well—” Hank Merry sounded dubious. “I can tell you how it’s supposed to work. In theory, that is. What it’s actually doing is something else. The idea is to tear down the test block on the transmitter plate, atom by atom, by means of a very high energy force field—a lot like the weather shield we have over the city, but tightly focused. Then when the test block is reduced to its component wavicles, we transmit it to the receiver plate, and reassemble it there with all the atoms returned to their original position. It’s like tearing a house down board by board and nail by nail, and then shipping it to some other place and reassembling it in reverse order, the last board first and so on. Except that it’s the molecular structure of the test blocks that we’re dealing with, not boards and nails.”
Gail nodded. “But you’d have to keep some kind of accurate record of the way the house was taken down, if you ever wanted to get it put back together again right.”
“That’s right. And that’s where the Hunyadi plates come in. The test block is really a collection of subatomic wavicles, held in a particular configuration by certain specific stresses—electromagnetic fields, subnuclear forces, and so on. The plates look complicated, but they’re really nothing but sheets of silver mesh coated with a special synthetic protein material. The protein molecules are hooked together in enormously long chains, which are all held in alignment until the transmitter begins decomposing the test block. Then various components of the chain shift alignment and act as a code or pattern to be used when the test block is being reassembled: almost like a dressmaker’s pattern. In effect, the plates ‘memorize’ the subatomic configuration of the test block and then guide the reassembly.” Merry paused and looked glum. “At least they’re supposed to do that. The trouble is that they aren’t all wired in yet, and the transmatter is still reassembling things fine without them—sometimes.”
“And sometimes not,” Gail said.
“That’s right,” Merry admitted.
Robert had been listening closely. Now he turned to Hank. “That’s what I don’t understand,” he said. “I always thought that all parts of a machine had to be functioning if you expected the machine to work at all. I mean, if the filament in a light bulb burns out, the light quits working, even if everything else is in perfect working order—right?”
“Of course.”
“And if the fuse was blown, you’d be pretty startled to see the light go on, all of a sudden, before you put a new fuse in.”
“Yes, you would.”
“Then how can this gadget work if all its parts aren’t even assembled yet?” Robert asked.
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out!” Merry said in exasperation. “The point is that it does. Look, watch this.”
He crossed the room, set a test block on the transmitter plate, and turned the control switch. The block vanished and reappeared on the receiver plate across the room. He repeated the procedure. Again the block vanished—but this time it didn’t reappear at all. “I can’t explain it, but it’s happening.”
“Some other things are happening too,” Robert said quietly. “Pieces of New York and Philadelphia are disappearing. Nobody can explain that, either.” He picked up one of the test blocks, weighed it in his hand, and looked up at Hank Merry. “Okay, suppose you watch for a minute and see if you can explain this.”
With the test block under his arm, Robert walked over to stand beside the transmitter plate. Suddenly he vanished, block and all. At the same instant he reappeared across the room, standing next to the receiver plate, still clutching the block under his arm. As Hank Merry’s jaw sagged, Robert walked back and tossed him the test block. “Now, then. Explain that.”
Merry looked at McEvoy, who looked as startled as he did, then back at Robert.
“I—I—what did you do?”
“I think I did the same thing your machine here has been doing,” Robert said, “only I did a better job of it.”
Gail glared at her son, clenching her fists. “I swear,” she said angrily, “if you weren’t so big I’d just whale you! This is not a magic show!”
Merry continued to stare at the boy. “You were—over here, and then—well, now, wait a minute! Do that again!”
“No, thanks.” Robert’s face was gray, and sweat was standing out on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he said to Gail. “I guess that wasn’t so smart. It was the same as before, except that I went quickly.”
“Went where?” Hank demanded.
“She can tell you,” Robert said, looking decidedly ill now. “I think I’d better sit down for a minute.”
Her anger fading, Gail told Hank Merry what she had told McEvoy earlier. “We can’t prove it,” she said, “but we know you’re creating a highly concentrated stress field on that transmitter plate. You’re sending things from Point A to Point B, all right, but you’re shoving them through another dimension in order to do it. And something—or somebody—on the Other Side very emphatically doesn’t like it a bit. Whatever you’re doing is causing trouble that Robert’s going and coming has never caused, and it looks as though something on the Other Side has picked up the tip of Manhattan Island and dumped it somewhere, in retaliation. Maybe they twisted it completely out of our space, so that in our universe it just doesn’t exist any more. Maybe it was just moved to another time sector. Maybe they dumped it in the middle of the ocean. It might not be hard for the Thresholders. But if they keep it up, it could be catastrophic for us.”
“But why?” McEvoy burst out. “What are we doing to hurt them?”
“I don’t know. But I think somebody had better find out before you do it any more.” She hesitated. “Probably Robert could help find out if you turned that gadget off long enough to give him time. Probably you and Dr. Merry could help, too, if you would.”
McEvoy shook his head angrily. “Do you realize what you’re asking me to do? You’re suggesting that I go before the International Joint Conference—the toughest crowd of practical politicians and businessmen the world has ever known—and tell them, ‘Sorry, fellows, but we have to close down this promising transmatter project right now because some spooks from the fourth dimension seem to be taking offense and biting off pieces of our universe.’ Oh, this is ridiculous!”